The story at Kamasengre Mixed Secondary School

Above is a message to Operation My People from Rebecca and Janet, two of the girls who are in school because a group of Americans are paying their school fees. For anyone involved with that organization, your donations are being spent well. We met with ten of the 20 students OMP sponsors; every one of them was grateful to you, seemed very happy to share with us about their lives, and several are doing very well in class (and that's according to the principal, not just the students). Not to mention they were just really nice kids.
For those of you that don't know about OMP or this relationship with Kamasengre Mixed Secondary School, here's the story of the school and students we visited.

Form Ten at KMSS, or what we'd call sophomores, all in one classroom.

Like I've written in other posts, Kamasengre is a rural district near the far west end of Rusinga Island. For years there was no school for secondary students there. This school, which is called "mixed" because boys and girls attend, is just four years old.
About 200 students fit in the four-room school. Do the math, or look at the picture above to see what that means in terms of class size. Eleven teachers rotate in and out of the four rooms at 40-minute intervals for each subject, during a day that lasts from as early as 6:30 a.m. for students looking for early tutoring help to 5 p.m. if the students stay for extracurriculars. (Which they do. Friday of our visit was drama club day, and at least half of the school stayed until almost 6 on a Friday night to watch their peers put on a play. Friday doesn't necessarily mean weekend, however, since most classes also meet Saturday as well. Also, you American teachers or school administrators may like to note, the students take a break in the morning to help clean the building or the school grounds. And of course they have a tea and mandazi break at 10 every day.)

Fifty students per class? A day that begins at 6:30 a.m.? This is the faculty at KMSS, who may be the real heroes. KMSS struggles to retain teachers because of its remote location, low pay, and lack of teacher housing.

Eighty-three students at KMSS are girls, who drop out at a much higher rate than boys. Pregnancy, the need to care for a family that has lost a parent or a lack of money for school fees, often because the student is an orphan, are just a few of the reasons. Operation My People addresses one of those issues (fees), community groups like women's clubs try to help teach girls to avoid pregnancy or HIV with education classes outside of school, and some orphans are able to live with others in the community who support them in school. (That was the case with our host, Sabina Otiendo, who had four girls living with her.)

Vivian Ochieng, an orphan who lost her parents to political violence in 2007, and Odira Francis Ranger, a Form Three who wants to be a computer engineer. (Or an actor, after the play we watched him in Friday night.)

Having a school in Kamasengre has helped the community immensely, it seemed. Principal Peter Okomo said many students nearby could not travel across the island to the other secondary school, and being within proximity of a child's home allows him to talk with parents about the value of education, or negotiate school fee payment in person. We were told that students from the surrounding area often  ask when they'll be able to enroll, and are turned away because there isn't room or the child can't afford the fees.
"If not for this school," Okomo told Timm and I when talking about the Form Four students who had been at KMSS since it opened, "these kids wouldn't go to school."
When we asked Ranger what he'd be doing if not for the OMP scholarship, the boy who was smiley, outgoing, and joking with us completely choked up. He couldn't finish the thought or put it into words. 

Bryan Onyango, an OMP scholarship recipient. Dozens of students apply for the OMP money, and to qualify they must maintain a C+ average.

On the first day we were at KMSS the Form Fours were taking their exit examinations, which college entrance in Kenya is based upon. At least four OMP students were expected to qualify, although college placement is assigned depending on how well you do in the exams. The school is also ranked against its regional peers, and Okomo proudly walked us through the latest comparison, showing KMSS at number 4 overall. They even rank individual students through the region, and Okomo  pointed out an underclass girl from Kamasengre in second place. Janet, the girl in the video above, was ranked eighth among Form Four students in six district schools.

Steven Ngesa shows us the new science lab, build with the help of an organization called 'One Kid One World.' The small inventory of books are stored in those back cupboards, though, as Ngesa put it, "A building without any books is not really a library."

With that much riding on scores they take the numbers game seriously, and most Form Four students don't participate in extracurriculars (the school has drama, soccer, handball and cross country) because they are too busy preparing for exams as they close their secondary school career. All Form Four classes, incidentally, are taught in English, making it a bit more difficult for kids who's native language is Swahili or Luo. So the students clearly work hard. One girl in Sabina's home, Brenda, would wake up around 4 each morning to work on her reading, in hopes of qualifying for the OMP funds next year. It's remarkable dedication, and from the sounds of it not all that uncommon.

Timm, Ranger, Bryan and Daniel talk geography. Perhaps it's obvious, but they needed him to point out Noatak.

But the facilities and resources haven't caught up. Daniel wants to study biology and be a doctor, Ranger likes computers, Jesslyn wants to be a CNN anchor. Pretty typical teenage ambitions, except this group, like much of Africa, I'd assume, pursues those dreams without a school library, without electricity in their classrooms, without indoor plumbing, and with two laptops available on the entire campus.
Still, when the career alternative is the local fishing industry, with 12-hour shifts in the dark on small boats catching buckets full of a tiny fish called omena, motivation can't be hard to find. We sat through an English class one afternoon, and a lesson on how punctuation use can change the meaning of a sentence had the room enraptured. There wasn't a peep other than to legitimately question the teacher's explanation.
"You are not a failure," Ngesa told us was the mantra they preach to the students, focusing on early grades, as we do here, to build the blocks that will turn Kamasengre into a more pretigious secondary school.
Okomo said that OMP's foundation — Theodora left Kenya to teach American students, and years later those students help Kenyan children — is the same worldview he tries to impart.
"Our aim is that they succeed in life," he told us our last morning at the school. "We tell them, 'OMP has extended a gesture to you. In three or four years, you will extend a gesture to someone else.'"

Aileen and Jesslyn, the Kamasengre actors, rappers, scholars, athletes, and, apparently, models. (We loaned the camera to the kids for awhile, so it was buddy picture day.)